Don’t let your heart quit on you. If you are living with high blood pressure, just knowing and doing
the minimum isn’t enough. Uncontrolled high blood pressure could lead to stroke, heart attack or death.

Get yours to a healthy range before it’s too late. Find out how at heart.org/BloodPressure

Check. Change. Control.™

Dear Sam,
The pressure you’re putting me under is too much.

I QUIT!

Sincerely,
Your Heart

S: 6. 5”S:

4.

37

5”T: 7”T:4. 875”B: 7. 25”

Lifestyle change requires an attitude shift as much asbehavior change. “There is no easy fix. You have to decidefirst that you want to live. It is a slow and never-endingprocess if you do it right. There is no magic pill to makeweight come off,” she said. “When it gets down to it,you have to develop mental grit. You have to quit makingexcuses and feeling sorry for yourself. The rewards willcome, and then it is so worth it. I could not walk to mymailbox and back four years ago — now I can walk 10,000steps a day. I still walk in pain, but it is easier. In my case,walking is the only treatment for PAD that works.”Her advice to others with a new PAD diagnosis?

“Educate yourself and your doctors on your disease.

Advocate for yourself, because many physicians do noteven have PAD on their radar,” she said. “Most of all, youmust make the lifestyle changes like quitting smoking andbeginning a walking program. You will never get better ifyou don’t. The one thing that keeps me going is knowingthat if I had not been diagnosed, I would have more thanlikely faced amputation of one or both legs. I would sayto weigh your treatment options carefully because thereare so many new things they are doing now in vascularsurgery. It really is exciting.”Elizabeth has been volunteering with the American HeartAssociation since 2015. She says it fills a need in her tohelp. She has joined Go Red For Women and has found aniche for reaching out to others through her PAD blog on theSupport Network. “The #GoRedGetFit group is awesomefor motivation and support. I highly recommend anyone thatis a survivor or has a family history of cardiovascular diseaseto join that group,” she said.

“When I had my bypass surgery a gentleman from the
American Heart Association came to see me and left me
some literature. He was so funny and let me know that no
matter what, there was life after bypass surgery. I told him
that I used to laugh when I was a smoker and say that I
wasn’t going to quit because we were all going to die of
something anyway. He said, ‘Yes, but some of us don’t die,
we have bypass surgery and are left to live with the pain.’ I
have never forgotten that, and it has motivated me to educate
people about PAD.”